About Me

Just your basic "no longer young" guy, I've learned a lot, some academically, a LOT more just by living (lol) life. --any way, relatively harmless---and at times even amusing,---- or so I've been told.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

With the talking heads all throwing their arms about and screaming the sky is falling , the sky is falling (the media just loves tossing negative stories around---good news doesn't sell), about the price of oil, here's a question for ya. Do YOU know where the country gets all its electricity ??(which by the way the USA uses 33 percent of the entire worlds generated Energy).
-----I have to admit I didn't know, and so much for thinking I am plugged in---(sigh). Here is the actual breakdown of where are Electricity generating comes from:

SOURCE PERCENT

Coal 48.6
Natural Gas 21.4
Nuclear 19.4
Hydro (rivers and waterfalls) 5.8
Non0Hydro (Solar, bio-mass, Wind, Geo-thermal hot springs etc) 3.2Oil 1.6 Now, you got to admit our power companies have planned ahead, they KNOW the world is running out of oil----but did you all know that the USA is the "Saudi Arabia" of coal deposits?? We got Coal coming out our ears folks, so as the oil and natural gas supplies get lower and lower, we got coal to back us up----but wait their IS one small problem----and its the "NIMBY'S", you know those that are screaming we are running out of energy---and then the next thing out of their mouths is---""and I don't want no refineries in MY backyard either, and no coal gasification plants, and city incinerators, --no to wind farms next door----etc, etc, etc. So when your lights grow dim in brown outs, and go out all together in blackouts---thank them Nimby's., or just get real comfortable paying the OPEC whatever they demand for oil---refined into gasoline as NIMBY's have pretty much closed all our national refineries already.

2 comments:

Okay Gary you can put a nuke plant here if we get to bury the waste in your backyard. Sound fair?Seriously the real problem won't be the production of energy but the fact that our power grid was built in the 50s and 60s and that'll cost a ton of money to replace.

It is easy to ridicule someone who fights against some kind of energy related activity from happening. But I wonder how many of us would want to live next to a strip mining operation, a coal gasification plant, or a nuke plant. I wonder how many of us have actually witnessed the results of any of it. I have. I delivered equipment to nuke plants and witnessed what was going on. I delivered chemicals for Monsanto and witnessed the crap they pulled many years ago. I worked in coal country for awhile and saw mountains disappear.

The writing is on the wall though. Coal will become the new oil. The technology exists to make it into almost anything we want. And the USA is indeed sitting on the largest known deposits in the World. Problem will be how to extract it without displacing the state of West Virginia, part of Pennsylvania and a good chunk of Kentucky and Tennessee. But it will happen. The World loves wasting energy more than it loves conserving it.

I should probably not give a rat's ass about this. My time on this planet is on the back stroke now. But since I care about the planet I leave my kid, I will do what I can to make the transition from what we have now to what we will have in the future as tolerable as possible. If that means putting constraints on energy companies and voting out energy lapdogs like we have now, then that is what I will do.

It is not an all or nothing situation. It does not have to be one way or the other. But opponents on both sides would want us to believe it is that way. Learn more about it and then decide. Right now, your view seems to be coming from only one take on the subject. An open mind is only dangerous if you are afraid of changing it.